This article examines the views of modern Russian scholars A. Dvor-nichenko, M. Krom, A. Filyushkin, and S. Mikhalchenko on the pre-revolution-ary and Soviet historiography of medie-val Lithuania. Chronological problem analysis constitutes the methodological framework of the study. Special atten-tion is paid to the priorities of the Rus-sian scholars in the analysis of the pre-revolutionary and Soviet Lithuanian studies. It is shown that the disintegra-tion of the Soviet Union marked a new period in research on the historiogra-phy of medieval Lithuania. The activa-tion of historical and historiographical studies was a result of a revision of views of Lithuanian past. The authors believe that modern historiography ex-hibits a “nostalgic” attitude to pre-revolutionary works, while the reception of the later, Soviet-era publications is more critically inclined. Post-Soviet his-torians do not restrict themselves by de-scribing previous historiography: they also consider factors behind the change in the attitudes to Lithuanian past. Thus, the scholars pay special attention to studying the connection between the po-litical situation and the evolution of the views of Russian scholars on the events of Lithuanian history.
Key words: pre-revolutionary and Soviet historiography of medieval Lithua-nia, history of LithuaLithua-nia, Dvornichenko, Krom, Filyushkin, Mikhalchenko
The collapse of the Soviet Un-ion marked a new stage in studying the historiography of medieval THE WORKS
OF MODERN RUSSIAN HISTORIANS
AND THE HISTORIOGRAPHY OF MEDIEVAL LITHUANIA BEFORE AND AFTER THE RED OCTOBER
M. Megem
*M. Wakar
*** Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University 14 A. Nevski St., Kaliningrad, 236041, Russia
** Wojciech Kętrzyński Research Centre, 87, Partyzantów St, Olsztyn, 10—402, Poland
Submitted on April 17, 2014
doi: 10.5922/2079-8555-2014-4-8
Lithuania. The development of historical and associated historiographical studies related to a revision of the Lithuanian past. The uniformity of ideological clichés and methodological frameworks was replaced by a di-versity of interpretations, objects, and methodologies [1—18].
In post-Soviet Russia, Saint Petersburg became the centre of histo-riographical research on the history of medieval Lithuania. In 1990—2000, A. Yu. Dvornichenko, M.M. Krom, and A.N. Filyushkin published a number of works on different aspects of the Lithuanian past. An analysis of earlier historiography is an integral part of these studies. Therefore, it is possible to speak of the St Petersburg historiographical tradition in modern Russian his-toriography.
The first post-Soviet author to address the Lithuanian Middle Ages was A. Yu. Dvornichenko1. In 1993, he published a monograph entitled The Rus-sian lands of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (until the 16th century). Essays on the history of the community, estates, and statehood [4]. In 2004, he wrote a preface to the new edition of the Essays on the history of the State of Lithuania and Russia by M.K. Lyubavsky [27]. A. Yu. Dvorkovich pays special attention to the situation of Russian lands within the GDL. He pre-sents his view of the historiography of the GDL from this perspective.
A. Yu. Dvornichenko stresses that political events, in particular the Pol-ish Uprising aroused interest in the history of western Russian lands [4, p. 5; 27, p. 15]. He calls the first works on the history of the State of Lithuania and Russia authored by N.G. Ustryalov, N.I. Kostomarov, M.O. Koyalovich, and I.D. Belyaev “naïve,” since they simply list facts. However, he stresses that these works formulated the question as to the community and zemstvo-based nature of the political organisation of western Russian lands [4, p. 6].
Dvornichenko also addresses the research conducted at St Vladimir Univer-sity in Kiev, which he describes as a major centre for studying the past of the GDL. The development of research on the history of Western Russia in Kiev is explained by the need to counterbalance the Polish influence [27, p. 16]. Dvor-nichenko examines of Kiev historians V.B. Antonovich, N.P. Dashkevich, M.F. Vladimirsky-Budanov, and F.I. Leontovich [4, p. 7—12]. He believes that the works of Antonovich and Dashkevich outlined the “controversial issues in the Russian historiography of the GDL that will be revisited in the future: the relations of ethnic groups within the state, the nature of the state per se, the situa-tion of Russian lands, Lithuanian “feudalism”, etc.” [27, p. 17].
1
Dvorkovich stresses that the GDL studies reached a peak in the late 19th—early 20th century [4, p. 28; 27, p. 17], when historians made the first serious generalisations [27, p. 19] and the leading universities in Kiev, Mos-cow, and St Petersburg set out to create “summarising” studies [4, p. 14]. The major specialists on the history of the State of Lithuania and Russia in-cluded M.K. Lyubavsky, M.V. Dovnar-Zapolsky, M.S. Grushevsky, and A.E. Presnyakov [4, p. 14—24].
Although Dvornichenko gives a positive assessment of pre-revolutionary historiography, he is highly critical of Soviet history. He believes that the GDL studies were abandoned in Soviet Russian to be replaced by studying several particular problems of its history [27, p. 24]. Dvornichenko interprets the works of V.T. Pashuto as an attempt to create a Marxist history of the GDL, calling his work The formation of the Lithuanian State as a “state or-der” written to a ready-made design and outdated to a greater degree than many pre-revolutionary works of the second half of the 19th centuries [4, p. 24—26]. Dvornichenko regrets that Pashuto’s conclusions were only de-tailed and developed later, whereas the Lithuanian-Russian history was ex-plored in the framework of “general edition” [4, p. 26], “which featured un-substantiated schemes and pompous rhetoric” [27, p. 26]. Moreover, the GDL studies were spread across the union republics [27, p. 26]. In conclu-sion, Dvornichenko stresses that although the research on the Western Rus-sian lands withered, there is a need to revive it [4, p. 28].
Another St Petersburg scholar, A.I. Filyushkin, compares the GDL his-tory to pieces of a broken mirror, a product of difference between the inter-pretations of the past provided by the Lithuanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrain-ian, and Russia historiographies. Russian historiography also offers numer-ous interpretations of the Lithuanian past [28, p. 599—600]. He comes to this conclusion through comparing the pre-revolutionary, Soviet, and con-temporary Russian perception of the GDL [28; 29]. He believes that the GDL heritage occupies an important position in the Russian historical mem-ory: “in the Lithuanian mirror of historical memory, Russia can see itself” [28, p. 561]. However, he stresses that the interest in the GDL history is caused not only by the political situation and the attempts to justify expan-sionist attitudes, but also by the intellectual and spiritual search of Russian thinkers [28, p. 561—562].
of the Great Limitrophe as a Western project of the Russian Empire [28, p. 569—574] or the historical predestination discourse [29, p. 95], “it is our lands” [28, p. 574—594] or the conquest discourse [29, p. 95], despotic Rus-sia could become a democracy following the example of the GDL [28, p. 595—598] or the “right Russia” discourse [29, p. 95].
In conclusion, Filyushkin gives an overview of the pre-revolutionary and Soviet historiography. When addressing the pre-revolutionary historiography, he stresses that the insufficient knowledge of the GDL history posed a problem during the Polish Uprising of 1863. The attempts to solve this problem resulted in a number of historical publications on Lithuanian history. “However, the re-flection of the Polish Uprising of 1863 produced more journalistic and propa-gandistic texts than historical works” [28, p. 598—599]. Studying Lithuanian history was not popular among Soviet historians. Addressing the history of cer-tain GDL areas was required only in the framework of cercer-tain narratives, thus the historical memory of this state became fragmented in Soviet science [28, p. 599]. Filyushkin pays special attention to the research of V.T. Pashuto, whose views had a profound effect on the development of Lithuanian studies. How-ever, Pashuto’s ideas did not find any followers who could create an independ-ent school of thought and publish works on the GDL history [29, p. 108].
Another St Petersburg scholar, M.M. Krom, addressed a number of gen-eral problems of Lithuanian historiography when reviewing the historiogra-phy of Russian-Lithuanian relations of the 15th-the first third of the 16th cen-tury. Not unlike his colleagues, he believes that the Polish Uprising aroused interest in Lithuanian history in the Russian society. The political component of the Polish led to the publication of a number of pro-governmental works (by M.O. Koyalovich, P.N. Batyushkov, P.D. Bryantsev, and others) that ex-hibited a pronounced anti-Polish and anti-Catholic sentiment. The key ide-ologist behind it was M.M. Koyalovich, whose works “did not contain new fact, and were not research works in a strict sense, but they did affect further studies” [30, p. 13]. Krom cites the works of I.D. Belyaev and M.F. Vladi-mirsky-Budanov as examples that show a belief in the supremacy of Ortho-doxy over other religions [30, p. 14].
In the 1890s, the historiographical situation changed: historians made a transition from the “search for abstract “origins” to studying real processes” [30, p. 15]. Krom considers the works of M.K. Lyubavsky, M.V. Dovnar-Zapolsky, and I.I. Lappo the classics of Lithuanian studies [30, p. 16] and calls A.E. Presnyakov’s lectures a summary of Russian and international Lithuanian studies [30, p. 18].
According to Krom, the focus of post-war Soviet historiography was on studying Russian-Lithuania relations in the 15th-16th century, as well as the situation of Slavic lands within the GDL. This approach cast the history of the GDL into oblivion, since Lithuania, Ukrainian, and Belarusian historiog-raphy studied the past of their part of this state. Despite that, the regional ap-proach contributed a large body of factual material [30, p. 21—22]. M.M. Krom’s main conclusion is that the history of Lithuania-Russian rela-tions depended on a number of ideological schemes: the idea of opposition between Orthodox Russian and Catholic West and the belief in the leading role of the masses in history etc. [30, p. 24].
Alongside the studies of Saint Petersburg authors, Lithuanian historiography is analysed in the pages of Bryansk historian S.I. Mikhalchenko. However, he considers Lithuanian historiography not as the central research object, but rather as one of the areas of interest of the Kiev school of history [20—26]2.
Mikhalchenko covers all milestones of the biographies, research work, methodological positions, and social and political views of the first genera-tion of the Kiev school — V.B. Antonovich, M.V. Vladimirsky-Budanov, F.I. Leontovich, — as well as their flowers — M.V. Dovnar-Zapolsky, P.V. Golubovsky, N.V. Molchanovsky. A.M. Andriyashev, V.G. Lyaskor-onsky. V.E. Danilevich, A.S. Grushevsky, M.S. Yasinsky, I.A. Malinovsky, etc. He also analyses a number of episodes relating to the perspective of Ki-ev scholars on the vicissitudes of Lithuanian history. For instance, he exam-ines V.B. Antonovich’s doctoral thesis on the history of the GDL [31, p. 25—26]. Mikhalchenko supposes that the perception of Lithuanian past as relations between peoples rather than fucntionign of the state was borrowed from N.I. Kostomarov. He also addresses the debate between N.P. Dash-kevich and V.B. Antonovich on the opposition of ethnographic origins in the early period of the GDL history and that between F.I. Leontovich and M.K. Lyubavsky on the state structure of the GDL [31, p. 56—57].
2
Post-Soviet solo- and multi-authored works on the historiography of Russian history pay more attention than Soviet scientists to the biographies of scholars engaged in Lithuanian studies [32—34]. These works focus not only on “classical” authors (M.P. Pogodin, N.I. Kostomarov, K.N. Bestuz-hev-Ryumin, A.E. Presnyakov) whose works were analysed in detail in So-viet times, but also other pre-revolutionary scholars (N.G. Ustryalov. M.O. Koyalovich, I.D. Belyaev, A.F. Hilferding, M.K. Lyubavsky, F.I. Le-ontovich, V.B. Antonovich, M.F. Vladimirsky-Budanov, M.S. Grushevsky). Moreover, the authors analyse the research of Soviet historians V.I. Picheta and V.T. Pashuto. Whereas Soviet “summarising” works on historiography reconstruct the professional development of scholars in the context of his-torical and ideological movements, modern studies devote a special section to each researcher. A different format of presenting information makes it possible to give a more comprehensive picture of achievements in the field of Lithuanian studies.
Post-Soviet history exhibits a keen interest in Lithuanian historiography. Modern Russian historiography is characterised by a “nostalgic” attitude to pre-revolutionary works and a critical perception of Soviet studies. Histori-ans see the late 19th-early 20th century as the most important and productive period in Russian Lithuanian studies. On the other hand, they stress the ex-cessive schematism, regionalism, and preconceptions. The authors do not only describe earlier historiography but also analyse factors behind the changes in the attitude towards the Lithuanian past. Special attention is paid to studying the connection between the political situation and the evolution of perspectives on the key stages of Lithuanian history. The role of the Pol-ish Uprising of 1863—1864 is strongly emphasised in this context.
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About the authors
Maksim Megem, Junior Research Fellow, Sociological Laboratory for Risk Analysis, Modelling and Forecasting, Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University, Russia.
E-mail: [email protected]
Dr Marcin Wakar, Adjunct Professor, Wojciech Kętrzyński Research Centre, Olsztyn, Poland.
